3 perldelta - what's new for perl5.004
7 This document describes differences between the 5.003 release (as
8 documented in I<Programming Perl>, second edition--the Camel Book) and
11 =head1 Supported Environments
13 Perl5.004 builds out of the box on Unix, Plan9, LynxOS, VMS, OS/2,
18 Most importantly, many bugs were fixed. See the F<Changes>
19 file in the distribution for details.
21 =head2 Compilation Option: Binary Compatibility With 5.003
23 There is a new Configure question that asks if you want to maintain
24 binary compatibility with Perl 5.003. If you choose binary
25 compatibility, you do not have to recompile your extensions, but you
26 might have symbol conflicts if you embed Perl in another application,
27 just as in the 5.003 release. By default, binary compatibility
28 is preserved at the expense of symbol table pollution.
30 =head2 New Opcode Module and Revised Safe Module
32 A new Opcode module supports the creation, manipulation and
33 application of opcode masks. The revised Safe module has a new API
34 and is implemented using the new Opcode module. Please read the new
35 Opcode and Safe documentation.
37 =head2 Extended Fcntl Module
39 The Fcntl module now supports these new constants
42 O_ASYNC O_DEFER O_DSYNC O_RSYNC O_SYNC
45 provided that your operating system supports these constants. The
46 constants are for use with the Perl sysopen() and fcntl(). These
47 constants are also visible for the basic database modules like the
48 SDBM_File. For the exact meaning of these contants and other Fcntl
49 constants please refer to the fcntl() documentation of your operating
50 system. Unsupported constants will cause run-time errors.
52 =head2 Internal Change: FileHandle Deprecated
54 Filehandles are now stored internally as type IO::Handle.
55 Although C<use FileHandle> and C<*STDOUT{FILEHANDLE}>
56 are still supported for backwards compatibility,
57 C<use IO::Handle> (or C<IO::Seekable> or C<IO::File>) and
58 C<*STDOUT{IO}> are the way of the future.
60 =head2 Internal Change: PerlIO internal IO abstraction interface
62 It is now possible to build Perl with AT&T's sfio IO package
63 instead of stdio. See L<perlapio> for more details, and
64 the F<INSTALL> file for how to use it.
66 =head2 New and Changed Built-in Variables
72 Extended error message under some platforms ($EXTENDED_OS_ERROR
73 if you C<use English>).
77 The current set of syntax checks enabled by C<use strict>. See the
78 documentation of C<strict> for more details. Not actually new, but
80 Because it is intended for internal use by Perl core components,
81 there is no C<use English> long name for this variable.
85 By default, running out of memory it is not trappable. However, if
86 compiled for this, Perl may use the contents of C<$^M> as an emergency
87 pool after die()ing with this message. Suppose that your Perl were
88 compiled with -DEMERGENCY_SBRK and used Perl's malloc. Then
92 would allocate a 64K buffer for use when in emergency.
93 See the F<INSTALL> file for information on how to enable this option.
94 As a disincentive to casual use of this advanced feature,
95 there is no C<use English> long name for this variable.
99 =head2 New and Changed Built-in Functions
103 =item delete on slices
105 This now works. (e.g. C<delete @ENV{'PATH', 'MANPATH'}>)
109 is now supported on more platforms, and prefers fcntl
110 to lockf when emulating.
112 =item keys as an lvalue
114 As an lvalue, C<keys> allows you to increase the number of hash buckets
115 allocated for the given associative array. This can gain you a measure
116 of efficiency if you know the hash is going to get big. (This is
117 similar to pre-extending an array by assigning a larger number to
122 then C<%hash> will have at least 200 buckets allocated for it. These
123 buckets will be retained even if you do C<%hash = ()>; use C<undef
124 %hash> if you want to free the storage while C<%hash> is still in scope.
125 You can't shrink the number of buckets allocated for the hash using
126 C<keys> in this way (but you needn't worry about doing this by accident,
127 as trying has no effect).
129 =item my() in Control Structures
131 You can now use my() (with or without the parentheses) in the control
132 expressions of control structures such as:
134 while (my $line = <>) {
140 if ((my $answer = <STDIN>) =~ /^y(es)?$/i) {
142 } elsif ($answer =~ /^n(o)?$/i) {
146 die "`$answer' is neither `yes' nor `no'";
149 Also, you can declare a foreach loop control variable as lexical by
150 preceding it with the word "my". For example, in:
152 foreach my $i (1, 2, 3) {
156 $i is a lexical variable, and the scope of $i extends to the end of
157 the loop, but not beyond it.
159 Note that you still cannot use my() on global punctuation variables
160 such as $_ and the like.
162 =item unpack() and pack()
164 A new format 'w' represents a BER compressed integer (as defined in
165 ASN.1). Its format is a sequence of one or more bytes, each of which
166 provides seven bits of the total value, with the most significant
167 first. Bit eight of each byte is set, except for the last byte, in
168 which bit eight is clear.
172 If the first argument to C<use> is a number, it is treated as a version
173 number instead of a module name. If the version of the Perl interpreter
174 is less than VERSION, then an error message is printed and Perl exits
175 immediately. Because C<use> occurs at compile time, this check happens
176 immediately during the compilation process, unlike C<require VERSION>,
177 which waits until run-time for the check. This is often useful if you
178 need to check the current Perl version before C<use>ing library modules
179 which have changed in incompatible ways from older versions of Perl.
180 (We try not to do this more than we have to.)
182 =item use Module VERSION LIST
184 If the VERSION argument is present between Module and LIST, then the
185 C<use> will call the VERSION method in class Module with the given
186 version as an argument. The default VERSION method, inherited from
187 the Universal class, croaks if the given version is larger than the
188 value of the variable $Module::VERSION. (Note that there is not a
189 comma after VERSION!)
191 This version-checking mechanism is similar to the one currently used
192 in the Exporter module, but it is faster and can be used with modules
193 that don't use the Exporter. It is the recommended method for new
196 =item prototype(FUNCTION)
198 Returns the prototype of a function as a string (or C<undef> if the
199 function has no prototype). FUNCTION is a reference to or the name of the
200 function whose prototype you want to retrieve.
201 (Not actually new; just never documented before.)
205 Functions documented in the Camel to default to $_ now in
206 fact do, and all those that do are so documented in L<perlfunc>.
208 =item C<m//g> does not trigger a pos() reset on failure
210 The C<m//g> match iteration construct used to reset the iteration
211 when it failed to match (so that the next C<m//g> match would start at
212 the beginning of the string). You now have to explicitly do a
213 C<pos $str = 0;> to reset the "last match" position, or modify the
214 string in some way. This change makes it practical to chain C<m//g>
215 matches together in conjunction with ordinary matches using the C<\G>
216 zero-width assertion. See L<perlop> and L<perlre>.
218 =item nested C<sub{}> closures work now
220 Prior to the 5.004 release, nested anonymous functions
221 didn't work right. They do now.
223 =item formats work right on changing lexicals
225 Just like anonymous functions that contain lexical variables
226 that change (like a lexical index variable for a C<foreach> loop),
227 formats now work properly. For example, this silently failed
228 before, and is fine now:
231 foreach $i ( 1 .. 10 ) {
241 =head2 New Built-in Methods
243 The C<UNIVERSAL> package automatically contains the following methods that
244 are inherited by all other classes:
250 C<isa> returns I<true> if its object is blessed into a sub-class of C<CLASS>
252 C<isa> is also exportable and can be called as a sub with two arguments. This
253 allows the ability to check what a reference points to. Example:
255 use UNIVERSAL qw(isa);
257 if(isa($ref, 'ARRAY')) {
263 C<can> checks to see if its object has a method called C<METHOD>,
264 if it does then a reference to the sub is returned; if it does not then
265 I<undef> is returned.
267 =item VERSION( [NEED] )
269 C<VERSION> returns the version number of the class (package). If the
270 NEED argument is given then it will check that the current version (as
271 defined by the $VERSION variable in the given package) not less than
272 NEED; it will die if this is not the case. This method is normally
273 called as a class method. This method is called automatically by the
274 C<VERSION> form of C<use>.
276 use A 1.2 qw(some imported subs);
282 C<class> returns the class name of its object.
286 C<is_instance> returns true if its object is an instance of some
287 class, false if its object is the class (package) itself. Example
289 A->is_instance(); # False
292 $var->is_instance(); # False
294 $ref = bless [], 'A';
295 $ref->is_instance(); # True
297 This can be useful for methods that wish to easily distinguish
298 whether they were invoked as class or as instance methods.
301 my $classname = shift;
302 if ($classname->is_instance()) {
303 die "unexpectedly called as instance not class method";
310 B<NOTE:> C<can> directly uses Perl's internal code for method lookup, and
311 C<isa> uses a very similar method and caching strategy. This may cause
312 strange effects if the Perl code dynamically changes @ISA in any package.
314 You may add other methods to the UNIVERSAL class via Perl or XS code.
315 You do not need to C<use UNIVERSAL> in order to make these methods
316 available to your program. This is necessary only if you wish to
317 have C<isa> available as a plain subroutine in the current package.
319 =head2 TIEHANDLE Now Supported
321 See L<perltie> for other kinds of tie()s.
325 =item TIEHANDLE classname, LIST
327 This is the constructor for the class. That means it is expected to
328 return an object of some sort. The reference can be used to
329 hold some internal information.
334 return bless \$i, shift;
337 =item PRINT this, LIST
339 This method will be triggered every time the tied handle is printed to.
340 Beyond its self reference it also expects the list that was passed to
346 return print join( $, => map {uc} @_), $\;
351 This method will be called when the handle is read from. The method
352 should return undef when there is no more data.
356 return "PRINT called $$r times\n";
361 As with the other types of ties, this method will be called when the
362 tied handle is about to be destroyed. This is useful for debugging and
363 possibly for cleaning up.
371 =item Efficiency Enhancements
373 All hash keys with the same string are only allocated once, so
374 even if you have 100 copies of the same hash, the immutable keys
375 never have to be re-allocated.
377 Functions that have an empty prototype and that do nothing but return
378 a fixed value are now inlined (e.g. C<sub PI () { 3.14159 }>).
382 Three new pragmatic modules exist:
390 Looks for MakeMaker-like I<'blib'> directory structure starting in
391 I<dir> (or current directory) and working back up to five levels of
394 Intended for use on command line with B<-M> option as a way of testing
395 arbitrary scripts against an uninstalled version of a package.
399 Tells the compiler to enable (or disable) the use of POSIX locales for
402 When C<use locale> is in effect, the current LC_CTYPE locale is used
403 for regular expressions and case mapping; LC_COLLATE for string
404 ordering; and LC_NUMERIC for numeric formating in printf and sprintf
405 (but B<not> in print). LC_NUMERIC is always used in write, since
406 lexical scoping of formats is problematic at best.
408 Each C<use locale> or C<no locale> affects statements to the end of
409 the enclosing BLOCK or, if not inside a BLOCK, to the end of the
410 current file. Locales can be switched and queried with
413 See L<perllocale> for more information.
417 Disable unsafe opcodes, or any named opcodes, when compiling Perl code.
425 New constants in the existing Fcntl modules are now supported,
426 provided that your operating system happens to support them:
429 O_ASYNC O_DEFER O_DSYNC O_FSYNC O_SYNC
432 =head2 Module Information Summary
434 Brand new modules, arranged by topic rather than strictly
437 CPAN interface to Comprehensive Perl Archive Network
438 CPAN::FirstTime create a CPAN configuration file
439 CPAN::Nox run CPAN while avoiding compiled extensions
441 IO.pm Top-level interface to IO::* classes
442 IO/File.pm IO::File extension Perl module
443 IO/Handle.pm IO::Handle extension Perl module
444 IO/Pipe.pm IO::Pipe extension Perl module
445 IO/Seekable.pm IO::Seekable extension Perl module
446 IO/Select.pm IO::Select extension Perl module
447 IO/Socket.pm IO::Socket extension Perl module
449 Opcode.pm Disable named opcodes when compiling Perl code
451 ExtUtils/Embed.pm Utilities for embedding Perl in C programs
452 ExtUtils/testlib.pm Fixes up @INC to use just-built extension
454 Fatal.pm Make do-or-die equivalents of functions
455 FindBin.pm Find path of currently executing program
457 Class/Template.pm Structure/member template builder
458 File/stat.pm Object-oriented wrapper around CORE::stat
459 Net/hostent.pm Object-oriented wrapper around CORE::gethost*
460 Net/netent.pm Object-oriented wrapper around CORE::getnet*
461 Net/protoent.pm Object-oriented wrapper around CORE::getproto*
462 Net/servent.pm Object-oriented wrapper around CORE::getserv*
463 Time/gmtime.pm Object-oriented wrapper around CORE::gmtime
464 Time/localtime.pm Object-oriented wrapper around CORE::localtime
465 Time/tm.pm Perl implementation of "struct tm" for {gm,local}time
466 User/grent.pm Object-oriented wrapper around CORE::getgr*
467 User/pwent.pm Object-oriented wrapper around CORE::getpw*
469 Tie/RefHash.pm Base class for tied hashes with references as keys
471 UNIVERSAL.pm Base class for *ALL* classes
475 The IO module provides a simple mechanism to load all of the IO modules at one
476 go. Currently this includes:
484 For more information on any of these modules, please see its
485 respective documentation.
489 The Math::Complex module has been totally rewritten, and now supports
490 more operations. These are overloaded:
492 + - * / ** <=> neg ~ abs sqrt exp log sin cos atan2 "" (stringify)
494 And these functions are now exported:
498 tan cotan asin acos atan acotan
499 sinh cosh tanh cotanh asinh acosh atanh acotanh
502 =head2 Overridden Built-ins
504 Many of the Perl built-ins returning lists now have
505 object-oriented overrides. These are:
517 For example, you can now say
521 $his = (stat($filename)->st_uid == pwent($whoever)->pw_uid);
523 =head1 Utility Changes
527 =item C<void> XSUBs now default to returning nothing
529 Due to a documentation/implementation bug in previous versions of
530 Perl, XSUBs with a return type of C<void> have actually been
531 returning one value. Usually that value was the GV for the XSUB,
532 but sometimes it was some already freed or reused value, which would
533 sometimes lead to program failure.
535 In Perl 5.004, if an XSUB is declared as returning C<void>, it
536 actually returns no value, i.e. an empty list (though there is a
537 backward-compatibility exception; see below). If your XSUB really
538 does return an SV, you should give it a return type of C<SV *>.
540 For backward compatibility, I<xsubpp> tries to guess whether a
541 C<void> XSUB is really C<void> or if it wants to return an C<SV *>.
542 It does so by examining the text of the XSUB: if I<xsubpp> finds
543 what looks like an assignment to C<ST(0)>, it assumes that the
544 XSUB's return type is really C<SV *>.
546 =head1 Documentation Changes
548 Many of the base and library pods were updated. These
549 new pods are included in section 1:
559 Locale support (internationalization and localization).
563 Tutorial on Perl OO programming.
567 Perl internal IO abstraction interface.
571 Although not new, this has been massively updated.
575 Although not new, this has been massively updated.
579 =head1 New Diagnostics
581 Several new conditions will trigger warnings that were
582 silent before. Some only affect certain platforms.
583 The following new warnings and errors outline these.
584 These messages are classified as follows (listed in
585 increasing order of desperation):
587 (W) A warning (optional).
588 (D) A deprecation (optional).
589 (S) A severe warning (mandatory).
590 (F) A fatal error (trappable).
591 (P) An internal error you should never see (trappable).
592 (X) A very fatal error (non-trappable).
593 (A) An alien error message (not generated by Perl).
597 =item "my" variable %s masks earlier declaration in same scope
599 (S) A lexical variable has been redeclared in the same scope, effectively
600 eliminating all access to the previous instance. This is almost always
601 a typographical error. Note that the earlier variable will still exist
602 until the end of the scope or until all closure referents to it are
605 =item %s argument is not a HASH element or slice
607 (F) The argument to delete() must be either a hash element, such as
610 $ref->[12]->{"susie"}
612 or a hash slice, such as
614 @foo{$bar, $baz, $xyzzy}
615 @{$ref->[12]}{"susie", "queue"}
617 =item Allocation too large: %lx
619 (X) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MSDOS machine.
621 =item Allocation too large
623 (F) You can't allocate more than 2^31+"small amount" bytes.
625 =item Attempt to free non-existent shared string
627 (P) Perl maintains a reference counted internal table of strings to
628 optimize the storage and access of hash keys and other strings. This
629 indicates someone tried to decrement the reference count of a string
630 that can no longer be found in the table.
632 =item Attempt to use reference as lvalue in substr
634 (W) You supplied a reference as the first argument to substr() used
635 as an lvalue, which is pretty strange. Perhaps you forgot to
636 dereference it first. See L<perlfunc/substr>.
638 =item Unsupported function fork
640 (F) Your version of executable does not support forking.
642 Note that under some systems, like OS/2, there may be different flavors of
643 Perl executables, some of which may support fork, some not. Try changing
644 the name you call Perl by to C<perl_>, C<perl__>, and so on.
646 =item Ill-formed logical name |%s| in prime_env_iter
648 (W) A warning peculiar to VMS. A logical name was encountered when preparing
649 to iterate over %ENV which violates the syntactic rules governing logical
650 names. Since it cannot be translated normally, it is skipped, and will not
651 appear in %ENV. This may be a benign occurrence, as some software packages
652 might directly modify logical name tables and introduce non-standard names,
653 or it may indicate that a logical name table has been corrupted.
655 =item Can't use bareword ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
657 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic references
658 are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
660 =item Constant subroutine %s redefined
662 (S) You redefined a subroutine which had previously been eligible for
663 inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for commentary and
668 (F) You passed die() an empty string (the equivalent of C<die "">) or
669 you called it with no args and both C<$@> and C<$_> were empty.
671 =item Integer overflow in hex number
673 (S) The literal hex number you have specified is too big for your
674 architecture. On a 32-bit architecture the largest hex literal is
677 =item Integer overflow in octal number
679 (S) The literal octal number you have specified is too big for your
680 architecture. On a 32-bit architecture the largest octal literal is
683 =item Name "%s::%s" used only once: possible typo
685 (W) Typographical errors often show up as unique variable names.
686 If you had a good reason for having a unique name, then just mention
687 it again somehow to suppress the message (the C<use vars> pragma is
688 provided for just this purpose).
690 =item Null picture in formline
692 (F) The first argument to formline must be a valid format picture
693 specification. It was found to be empty, which probably means you
694 supplied it an uninitialized value. See L<perlform>.
696 =item Offset outside string
698 (F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with an offset
699 pointing outside the buffer. This is difficult to imagine.
700 The sole exception to this is that C<sysread()>ing past the buffer
701 will extend the buffer and zero pad the new area.
703 =item Stub found while resolving method `%s' overloading `%s' in package `%s'
705 (P) Overloading resolution over @ISA tree may be broken by importing stubs.
706 Stubs should never be implicitely created, but explicit calls to C<can>
709 =item Cannot resolve method `%s' overloading `%s' in package `s'
711 (P) Internal error trying to resolve overloading specified by a method
712 name (as opposed to a subroutine reference).
716 (X|F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
717 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request.
719 The request was judged to be small, so the possibility to trap it
720 depends on the way Perl was compiled. By default it is not trappable.
721 However, if compiled for this, Perl may use the contents of C<$^M> as
722 an emergency pool after die()ing with this message. In this case the
723 error is trappable I<once>.
725 =item Out of memory during request for %s
727 (F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
728 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. However,
729 the request was judged large enough (compile-time default is 64K), so
730 a possibility to shut down by trapping this error is granted.
732 =item Possible attempt to put comments in qw() list
734 (W) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; as with literal
735 strings, comment characters are not ignored, but are instead treated
736 as literal data. (You may have used different delimiters than the
737 exclamation marks parentheses shown here; braces are also frequently
740 You probably wrote something like this:
747 when you should have written this:
754 If you really want comments, build your list the
755 old-fashioned way, with quotes and commas:
759 'b', # another comment
762 =item Possible attempt to separate words with commas
764 (W) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; therefore commas
765 aren't needed to separate the items. (You may have used different
766 delimiters than the parentheses shown here; braces are also frequently
769 You probably wrote something like this:
773 which puts literal commas into some of the list items. Write it without
774 commas if you don't want them to appear in your data:
778 =item Scalar value @%s{%s} better written as $%s{%s}
780 (W) You've used a hash slice (indicated by @) to select a single element of
781 a hash. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar value (indicated by $).
782 The difference is that C<$foo{&bar}> always behaves like a scalar, both when
783 assigning to it and when evaluating its argument, while C<@foo{&bar}> behaves
784 like a list when you assign to it, and provides a list context to its
785 subscript, which can do weird things if you're expecting only one subscript.
787 =item untie attempted while %d inner references still exist
789 (W) A copy of the object returned from C<tie> (or C<tied>) was still
790 valid when C<untie> was called.
792 =item Value of %s construct can be "0"; test with defined()
794 (W) In a conditional expression, you used <HANDLE>, <*> (glob), or
795 C<readdir> as a boolean value. Each of these constructs can return a
796 value of "0"; that would make the conditional expression false, which
797 is probably not what you intended. When using these constructs in
798 conditional expressions, test their values with the C<defined> operator.
800 =item Variable "%s" may be unavailable
802 (W) An inner (nested) I<anonymous> subroutine is inside a I<named>
803 subroutine, and outside that is another subroutine; and the anonymous
804 (innermost) subroutine is referencing a lexical variable defined in
805 the outermost subroutine. For example:
807 sub outermost { my $a; sub middle { sub { $a } } }
809 If the anonymous subroutine is called or referenced (directly or
810 indirectly) from the outermost subroutine, it will share the variable
811 as you would expect. But if the anonymous subroutine is called or
812 referenced when the outermost subroutine is not active, it will see
813 the value of the shared variable as it was before and during the
814 *first* call to the outermost subroutine, which is probably not what
817 In these circumstances, it is usually best to make the middle
818 subroutine anonymous, using the C<sub {}> syntax. Perl has specific
819 support for shared variables in nested anonymous subroutines; a named
820 subroutine in between interferes with this feature.
822 =item Variable "%s" will not stay shared
824 (W) An inner (nested) I<named> subroutine is referencing a lexical
825 variable defined in an outer subroutine.
827 When the inner subroutine is called, it will probably see the value of
828 the outer subroutine's variable as it was before and during the
829 *first* call to the outer subroutine; in this case, after the first
830 call to the outer subroutine is complete, the inner and outer
831 subroutines will no longer share a common value for the variable. In
832 other words, the variable will no longer be shared.
834 Furthermore, if the outer subroutine is anonymous and references a
835 lexical variable outside itself, then the outer and inner subroutines
836 will I<never> share the given variable.
838 This problem can usually be solved by making the inner subroutine
839 anonymous, using the C<sub {}> syntax. When inner anonymous subs that
840 reference variables in outer subroutines are called or referenced,
841 they are automatically re-bound to the current values of such
844 =item Warning: something's wrong
846 (W) You passed warn() an empty string (the equivalent of C<warn "">) or
847 you called it with no args and C<$_> was empty.
849 =item Got an error from DosAllocMem
851 (P) An error peculiar to OS/2. Most probably you're using an obsolete
852 version of Perl, and this should not happen anyway.
854 =item Malformed PERLLIB_PREFIX
856 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERLLIB_PREFIX should be of the form
864 with non-empty prefix1 and prefix2. If C<prefix1> is indeed a prefix of
865 a builtin library search path, prefix2 is substituted. The error may appear
866 if components are not found, or are too long. See L<perlos2/"PERLLIB_PREFIX">.
868 =item PERL_SH_DIR too long
870 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERL_SH_DIR is the directory to find the
871 C<sh>-shell in. See L<perlos2/"PERL_SH_DIR">.
873 =item Process terminated by SIG%s
875 (W) This is a standard message issued by OS/2 applications, while *nix
876 applications die in silence. It is considered a feature of the OS/2
877 port. One can easily disable this by appropriate sighandlers, see
878 L<perlipc/"Signals">. See L<perlos2/"Process terminated by SIGTERM/SIGINT">.
884 If you find what you think is a bug, you might check the headers of
885 recently posted articles in the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup.
886 There may also be information at http://www.perl.com/perl/, the Perl
889 If you believe you have an unreported bug, please run the B<perlbug>
890 program included with your release. Make sure you trim your bug
891 down to a tiny but sufficient test case. Your bug report, along
892 with the output of C<perl -V>, will be sent off to perlbug@perl.com
893 to be analysed by the Perl porting team.
897 The F<Changes> file for exhaustive details on what changed.
899 The F<INSTALL> file for how to build Perl. This file has been
900 significantly updated for 5.004, so even veteran users should
903 The F<README> file for general stuff.
905 The F<Copying> file for copyright information.
909 Constructed by Tom Christiansen, grabbing material with permission
910 from innumerable contributors, with kibitzing by more than a few Perl
913 Last update: Tue Jan 14 14:03:02 EST 1997